


If promises are made to be broken, maybe this one we'll keep

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Promises, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22554883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Promises have become Garfield's new thing once returning from Cadmus, considering that so many have been broken and he's gotten burned every time. So when Dick asks him to help him look for a run-away Jason, Garfield thinks that just maybe he could make another promise.
Relationships: Garfield Logan & Jason Todd, Kon-El | Conner Kent & Garfield Logan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 170





	If promises are made to be broken, maybe this one we'll keep

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't too proud of this one, but the idea of Conner and Gar having a secret mantra of making promises was just too good to pass up. Also, I came up with the title of this fic myself, but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a song lyric?? I didn't really think about Rose and Jason's relationship when I wrote this, so sorry about that. I had to re-watch the scene of Conner saving Jason to make sure they hadn't shared names. Anyway, I'm not too proud of this, but I hope you guys like it anyway x

It was a few days after the near end of the world, and Garfield was still getting used to being alone.

Not totally alone. Kory would always knock on his bedroom door to offer him food that they both knew that he would just refuse and Dick would come and check on him every now and again and Conner was always there with Krypto to play video games and eat a whole bowl of popcorn to himself, but it just wasn’t the same.

For the first time, well the second time but Garfield really didn’t want to think about that, Rachel was gone. She had left him mostly alone. Which he really didn’t mind- she had gone with the Amazon’s to see if she could find a way to save Donna. Which was much more important than keeping Garfield company but… well. His one true constant in the craziness of his life was gone, and though Garfield was surrounded by old and new friends, none of them was Rachel, the girl who had been there from the start, who had pulled him from the darkness and into the light.

Sleep didn’t come easy to Garfield since… since Cadmus. Every time he closed his eyes he tasted the blood, but it was thick and heavy that it even made the tiger sick. He worried about what would happen when he woke up- would he still be in his bed exactly where he was or would the whole tower be dead and the blood in his mouth be more than just a memory? He was never sure. He feared what would happen if he fell asleep and lost the control he had practised for years to carefully maintain. He didn’t want to be the reason his new family wouldn’t wake up in the morning.

He didn’t leave his room much any more. Of course, he would go have meals with the team that he would mostly pick at, but it still made him feel sick. The phantom taste of blood turned it rancid. He would help Dick with the cooking and spar with Rose and help Kory clean up, and some of the highlights of his days were hanging out with Conner, but in his room, he just felt safer. The quiet calmed both his mind and the tiger’s tenacity. He had earned a new appreciation for silence.

A lot of his time was spent reading the book that Donna had left for him, which is what he was doing when Dick knocked on the wood and entered without waiting for a reply. “Hey, Gar. Rough night?” he tried for conversation, but they both knew that he already had the answer, so Garfield didn’t comment. “Uh- I need your help. I want you to help me go look for Jason. He’s been missing for a while and Bruce said that he hasn’t answered any of his calls, so I want to go and look for him, just to make sure that he’s OK.”

"Why?" Garfield couldn't stop himself from asking. "He left for a reason. Why do you want to go find him if he doesn't want to be found?"

A pained expression crossed Dick's face and he held tighter to the side of the door. “He’s family,” Dick said as he crossed his arms over his chest, and when it was obvious that the train of thought didn’t work, he changed tactics. “And Bruce wants me to find him.”

“No he doesn’t,” Garfield said as he stood up and grabbed his jacket. “Why me? I barely even spoke to him.”

“You were the one who trained with him the most,” Dick said as he watched Garfield exit the room. “And you were the one he came to when he went after Deathstroke. There’s obviously something between you two, even if neither of you knows it’s there. Nothing much, but it’s something. You could have been friends in a different life.”

The back of Garfield’s head tingled near-painfully and he rubbed at it instinctually. The tiger growled in recognition within his chest. “As far as I know, Jason kinda hates my guts.” Honestly, Garfield couldn’t comprehend why Dick had come to him first. Not that Garfield didn’t like Jason- the kid could be a pain in the ass and a bit of a handful, but Garfield was the only member of the Titans who could stomach his presence for hours, but he didn’t want anything to happen to the guy. Garfield could understand him- and that scared him a little bit. But the tiger didn’t want to eat him, so that was an added bonus.

He stopped walking down the hallway when he no longer heard Dick’s footsteps on the polished tile, and he turned to catch Dick looking at him with sad, desperate eyes. “Please Gar. I need you to do this.”

The whole situation was confusing, and considering that Garfield had only just returned to the land of the living so to speak, he really didn’t have the mental capacity or the energy to deal with this. “Why are you begging me? I said I was coming, didn’t I? Just let me speak to Conner first.”

“You didn’t say- OK,” Dick closed Garfield’s bedroom door before hurrying after him down the hallway.

Conner was sitting on the couch watching TV with Kory and Hank with Krypto asleep on the seat beside him, a salad bowl filled with cereal resting on his lap. He looked up when Garfield approached and gave him a goofy smile, show and snack forgotten. But when he saw the serious look on Garfield’s face, his smile faltered a little. “Hi,” he said. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, sorry big guy,” Garfield rubbed at the back of his neck and winced in apology. Krypto reached his head up to bump his nose against Garfield’s hand, and Garfield scratched him behind the ears. “But it won’t be for long, alright? A couple of days at the most, maybe. I’ll call you the whole time. But dude, if you don’t want me to go, I won’t.”

He waited patiently for Conner to make a decision, but after a short moment of contemplation, Conner shook his head. “No, you should go. It’ll be good for you. You don’t get out much anymore. You should go and have fun and then come back and tell me all about it.”

“Thanks, man,” Garfield held out his fist for a fist bump, and Conner obliged, still a little hard but much softer than when Garfield had first taught it to him, so it was an improvement. “I promise I’ll come back.”

“And I promise I’ll be here,” Conner effortlessly completed the end of their little mantra, before turning back to the TV and shovelling another spoonful of cereal into his mouth, milk dripping down his chin.

Kory and Hank were watching them with strange expressions on their faces, shocked at the new development, but they didn’t understand, could never understand the connection that Garfield shared with Conner and the things that they had gone through together, that Garfield needed reassurance that he wasn’t going to return to an empty house because his friends had decided that he wasn’t worth the trouble and Conner needed to be sure that he wouldn’t be abandoned when things got hard and left to fend for himself in a world he still didn’t fully understand.

Gritting his teeth, Garfield had to turn away and ignore the threatening growl of the tiger within his chest. “Let’s go,” he said to Dick as he made his way towards the elevator.

The car ride back to Gotham city was just as awkward and uncomfortable as Garfield had expected it to be. It was different without Kory and Rachel there to bounce jokes off of and exchange laughter with- it was just him and Dick, and a long, empty stretch of highway in a car with a broken radio and that made a weird rattling noise every time it drove over a speedbump. Garfield was curled up in the passenger seat, his feet on the dash, and Dick didn’t tell him off. He had tried to sleep, but the memories and the taste of blood didn’t let him, and the tiger was too restless and on-edge to do anything but let Garfield stare out the window at the quickly passing landscape.

Of course, Dick tried, he really did. He couldn't go 24 hours with trying to save someone or to fix a birdies broken wings, but Garfield didn’t need to be saved. The time for saving was long ago. 

"Uh, listen, Gar," Dick broke the silence about an hour in. "I know what Cadmus did to you is still sticking with you, and that you’ve gone through a lot lately, but you know that you can talk to me about it any time, right? My door is always open.”

“Thanks, Dick,” Garfield replied, staring out the window. “But I’m good.”

That obviously wasn’t the response that Dick had been expecting, and he cleared his throat. “You and Conner have gotten pretty close recently,” Dick said. “I know you miss Rachel, but…”

“Don’t pin anything on Rachel. She has nothing to do with it. I’m allowed to have other friends,” Garfield replied, surprisingly bitter, but that may have had something to do with the tiger’s distrust- he didn’t like to hear her name after what she did. “You all abandoned me, left me _alone_ in an empty tower, and Conner was there for me when nobody else was. He was by my side when Cadmus broke in and abducted us, not any of you. You were all gone. I tried to call you, but you had decided to get yourself arrested so you didn’t need to hear from me. But none of you could ever understand what happened to me and Conner, and you never will so _stop_ trying to pretend like you know how I feel and taking credit for my pain, alright? I don’t want to talk about it.”

Satisfied, the tiger settled back against Garfield’s ribcage, proud and sated, and Garfield was finally able to take a breath that he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding. It felt like he’d been suffocating for a really long time. Maybe that’s what happened when you held your tongue. But maybe he was just out of practice. It was hard to confide in someone when you didn't trust them.

Dick turned back to the road and they didn't speak for the rest of the trip, and the tiger felt victorious. 

Gotham City was dark and gloomy, just as it had been the last time they were there, but Garfield didn’t have the energy to enjoy the sights. Dick had wanted to visit the Manor or the GCPD but instead, Garfield stripped off in an empty alleyway and the tiger prowled through the streets, not worried about being caught, and kept it’s nose low to the ground. It wasn’t exactly a sniffer dog, but the tiger’s sense of smell was much better than either Dick’s or Garfield’s, so he thought it would be better than randomly walking around the city hoping to run into him.

Eventually, Garfield came across a school, and the tiger led him around the back to what looked like the school theatre, and the tiger refused to go any closer. When Garfield shifted back, Dick handed him his clothing and kept watch to make sure they weren't caught. Public nudity was a serious offence, and it was even worse at a school.

“He’s here,” Garfield said as he pushed himself into the empty theatre. The door slammed shut behind them, and the sound echoed in the darkness, bouncing off the walls and empty chairs. “I don’t know where, but he is.”

“Why would he be here?” Dick was frowning as he looked sceptically at Garfield, who instead walked inside with purpose. 

There were many things that Garfield wanted to say, but he held his tongue, much to the tiger's dismay. The room was large, and their every footfall echoed like the banging of a drum, but there was one thing that Garfield and the tiger were very sure about- Jason Todd was in here, somewhere.

Instead of answering, Garfield began to look around, and after a moment, Dick joined him. They looked for a while, under chairs and through adjacent doors and into every nook and cranny, but eventually, Dick pointed upwards, and when Garfield looked at where he was pointing, he saw a shoe swinging back and forth on a support beam, hidden by pipes and cloth. “It shouldn’t be me,” Dick said. “I think I was why he ran off in the first place. You should go.”

“Right,” Garfield said. “Send the guy he hates, good idea.”

But he knew better than to complain- there was a ladder that led up to a catwalk, both dusty and unused, and Garfield was worried that they wouldn’t hold his weight, but he needn't worry. The only thing spurring him on was the tiger pumping fearlessness into his veins and the sight of the red shoe just out of sight. When Garfield looked down, he saw Dick looking up at him, watching him, and Garfield knew that he would try to catch him if he were to fall.

Eventually, he climbed onto the catwalk. It creaked and moaned under his weight, but once he walked past a support pillar filled with spiderwebs, he saw Jason, his eyes very bright in the darkness. It would take a jump to get to where he was from the catwalk, and Garfield wasn’t confident enough to even attempt that, so he stayed on the catwalk.

Jason was sat in a collection of blankets and a sleeping bag stuffed with pillows, cramped into a corner, suspended in the air with bungee cords attached to the pipes in case he rolled out of his nook in the middle of the night. He wore an oversized red hoodie, a few sizes too big, and a pair of red shoes with miss-matched socks. His raven hair was a mess, almost like he’d been running his hands through it a few too many times, greasy and unkempt. His eyes were glossy, and the bags under his eyes were deep purple and heavy, and Garfield had a feeling like he hadn’t slept in a while. “What do you want, Gar?” Jason said, his voice quiet and reedy, almost as if he hadn’t spoken to anyone since he’d left. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Listen, I don’t want to be here either,” Garfield held his hands up, “But Dick insisted that I help come find you. Apparently Bruce sent him, but personally, I think that’s a load of bullshit.”

“Then leave,” Jason waved a hand vaguely, and his head hit the back wall. Almost like his heart wasn’t in it. “Tell Dick you couldn’t find me. Tell him you have to look somewhere else.”

Garfield shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do that.”

The look that crossed Jason’s face was a familiar one, but it wasn’t the same one as it was a few weeks ago. Less like a raging fire, and more like a distant pillar of ice out in an empty ocean. “How the hell did you find me, anyway?”

“I didn’t find you. The tiger did,” Garfield said, as he swung his legs over the railing of the catwalk and hung onto it with his hands. Garfield himself wasn’t very stable, but the tiger wouldn’t let him fall. 

Jason turned away. “Of course. I can’t even be alone without one of you assholes poking into my business.”

Sighing, Garfield kicked the heels of his shoes back and forth against the railing and the sound echoed through the room. “Listen, man, I didn’t want to come. I wanted to leave you be. I understand that there's a reason why you left, and I get that. But I’m not just going to leave you now that I’m here. You haven’t even seen Conner since he woke up.”

“Who the fuck is Conner?”

“The guy who saved you from falling off the building,” Garfield explained, and Jason’s face immediately softened, which Garfield was glad for. “He’s asked about you every day. He wants to know where you are.”

“That’s nice of him,” Jason said, shyly, and looked away, but not before Garfield saw the red blush rise to his cheeks. “I’m sure that’ll change if he gets to know me, though. Most people can’t stand me once they do. My blood is laced with poison that burns everyone it comes across.”

It took all the tigers self-control to keep Garfield from leaping over to where Jason was sitting, but somehow he held back. The look on Jason’s face made something ache deep within Garfield’s soul, but it was one he recognised- it was the same face he saw every time he looked in the mirror. “Jason, listen. I know you think that nobody wants you, but we do. I do. I could have… we could have really used you these last couple of weeks. Bad things happened to us, to me and Conner, and I don’t think we’ll ever be the same again.” Jason turned sharply to look at him. “So I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve screwed up so badly that you think nobody wants to know you. I’m sorry they yelled at you- the Titans- when you left. That wasn’t right of them, and I’m sorry I didn’t stop them either. I wasn’t totally sure why everyone was yelling at you, and the tiger thought that it was better to let it play out before I got involved. I shouldn’t have listened to it.”

Jason shook his head. “It’s not your fault. You were pretty much the only reason I stayed as long as I did. You came with me when I went after Slade, and you were the only one not to give me shit about it. You’ve got literally nothing to apologise for.”

“I know, but that hasn’t made me feel any better,” Garfield said. “Ever since Cadmus broke into the tower- it’s a long story- I haven’t felt the same. I’m worried that… I don’t know. I know how you feel, when you left. I can’t stand the way they look at me, and how differently they treat me now. It’s not like what they did to you, but I still hate it.”

“Then why do you stay?” Jason asked, no longer volatile.

Garfield shrugged. “Because I have nowhere else to go. And because I can’t leave Conner. I promised that I would come back, and I will. I always keep my promises.” A thought came to Garfield like a strike of electricity, and he decided to run with it before he could change his mind. “Jason, can I make _you_ a promise?”

Confused, Jason’s brow furrowed and his eyebrows pulled together. “What promise?”

“I promise that I’ll be there for you when you need me,” Garfield said. “And I promise that I won't forget you.” He held out his hand and waited.

Jason looked between Garfield’s hand and his face for a painstakingly long while before he eventually said, “What the hell are you doing?” his voice raw, his intentions unclear. His eyes looked wet.

“I’m making you a promise,” Garfield’s hand was unwavering in the empty space between them. “That I will never judge you, and that I will never let you feel alone like this again. Because I know what it’s like, and it’s not a nice feeling.”

For a moment, he was worried that it wasn’t going to work, that this whole discussion was just a lost cause, but slowly, eventually, Jason reached out and shortened the space between them until he was clasping Garfield’s hand in his own. “OK. If you’re sure, I guess.”

Grinning, Garfield squeed Jason’s hands in his own. “I’ve never been more sure about anything else in my life. But uh, this does mean that you have to come back with Dick and me.”

Gulping, Jason looked with unreadable eyes down below, where both men knew Dick was waiting. “If I go with you…” Jason began. “Will you tell me this ‘long story’ of how this... Cadmus… broke into the tower? It sounds like bad news."

Relieved, Garfield sighed and mustered a nod. “Yeah dude, I think we’ve got the time for that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let's be real, the cereal Conner was eating was Lucky Charms. I've never had Lucky Charms or seen them in person before, but I think that's the kind of cereal Conner would LOVE


End file.
